J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Vale of Heathfield Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Vale of Heathfield, with Heathfield Park ?1810

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Vale of Heathfield, with Heathfield Park’ ?1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 42 Verso:
The Vale of Heathfield, with Heathfield Park ?1810
D10261
Turner Bequest CXXXVII 41a
Pencil on white wove paper, 181 x 228 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Line of Sea’ above the horizon, right of centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Forming a double-spread with folio 43 (D10262; Turner Bequest CXXXVII 42) and also continued slightly to the left on folio 41 verso (D10259; CXXXVII 40a) this view looks across the estate of Heathfield Park, past the spire of All Saints Church, Heathfield towards the coast and Beachy Head in the distance. In D10266 it reaches as far as the Gibraltar Tower. The resulting watercolour made for John Fuller about 1816 (British Museum, London)1 and the print engraved by William Bernard Cooke for Views in Sussex has been described as an ‘impressive but not strictly veracious landscape’.2
Fuller was related to Lord Heathfield who had led a heroic defence of Gibraltar during a Spanish siege in 1779–82. The Gibraltar Tower was built by a later owner of the estate in memory of Lord Heathfield’s action.

David Blayney Brown
March 2011

1
Wilton 1979, p.348 no.427.
2
E.V. Lucas, Highways and Byways in Sussex, London 1912, pp.380–1.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The Vale of Heathfield, with Heathfield Park ?1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-vale-of-heathfield-with-heathfield-park-r1131304, accessed 19 September 2024.